Fifteen-year-old Sparky (Brian Vernal) is the despair of his teachers. He won't sit still and listen. They tell him he won't get any qualifications. "Do you think it's going to make a difference?" he asks. This boy has brains. Siouxsie (Samantha Foley), meanwhile, believes in cosmic ordering. She thinks the Japanese tsunami and the Icelandic ash clouds were caused by teenagers with kinetic powers, and blames herself for the death of her baby stepsister.

These two troubled teens come together with explosive results in Davey Anderson's play for the Thickskin theatre company. Not that the adults are any less messed up: when teacher Mrs Kelly (Pauline Lockhart) steps into the classroom, she is struck by a vision of wild animals tearing each other apart, and Mr Murphy (Nick Rhys) is definitely not cut out for the teaching profession.

Anderson's nifty drama is like a theatrical cross of the teen movies Heathers and Carrie, with a strong Scottish twist. The four characters at its dark, troubling heart may be fairly innocuous alone, but in combination are potentially lethal. You might say the same about the play, whose individual components – writing, acting, projection and choreography – are all pretty strong, but come together in a small but persuasive package that has real energy and excitement. The piece doesn't necessarily take us into new territory, but its suggestion that young people's behaviours are often medicalised, and that most kids go through phases from which they eventually emerge unscathed, is worth listening to, and comes wrapped up in a sweaty hour of theatre.